OAWYM: War!

Game Date: 8/20/2016
Location: The Game Keep
Campaign: OAWYM, Session 8
System: D&D 5e
DM: Rusty

The Party:
Corbin (Daniel) - Human Clizard
Byzun (Gary) - Human Sorcerer
Malcer (Graham) - Human Warlock
Marcella (Lanessa) - Human Bard
Tamir (Other Matt) - Human Archer
Val Ravensword (Matt) - Half-Human Paladin

NPC Companions:
Dene Ledford - Val's Companion
Robb - Corbin's Companion
Tatio - Malcer's Companion

The Session:
Last week we killed an undead wizard.  Today we took a long rest, then returned to our Elven questgivers.  This secured our relationship with the Elves, who agreed to send fifty archers to aid our war with the Iron Circle.  Having sealed this agreement, we returned to our Druid questgiver.  The Druid told us to head back to town to see the Dar, the leader of the resistance.

The Iron Circle's army was marching towards the town.  We had two days to plan before they got here.  The resistance had gathered fighters from various nearby farms and towns.  We discussed various traps, making the bridge into a chokepoint, where to put barricades, and combat tactics.  When we finally felt we were ready, we skipped forward to the battle itself. 

We hard our first skirmish in a farmhouse before the bridge.  As several soldiers marched by, we caught their attention and rolled initiative.  We faced twelve foes, including an acid-spitting drake.  The drake won initiative, taking off half of Val's hit points with his lethal loogie.  We had a decent opening round - Tamir killed one right off, and Marcella and Malcer each hit multiple targets with Shatter. 

But the drake kept using his acid spit, which would harm several of us at once with its splash damage.  And the head soldier had a sweeping blow move that could hit all adjacent targets.  So we did well, but we took a lot of damage.  It finally came down to the boss, one soldier, and the drake.  Val took out the boss, and the remaining soldier tried to make a run for it.  Corbin's companion Rob ended up finishing off both the soldier and the drake.

We managed to squeeze in a short rest while we traveled to the next battle point.  One of the resistance rode up to us and told us Dar needed our help.  He pointed us in the right direction, and warned us that some of our enemies weren't human.  We caught up to the fight, and faced nine enemies.  It was a mix of cutthroats, rabble, a cleric, and two "Tar Devils" (which we dubbed "Tarduckens"). 

The Tar Devils were particularly vicious.  They could restrain us in flaming nets, pulling us to them where there was a zone of flaming tar.  They were also resistant to our weapons.  Several of us went down multiple times in this fight, and we used up almost all of our healing resources.  The evil cleric kept hitting Val with "Inflict Wounds" which took her down to zero twice.  Eventually Val delivered the killing blow to the cleric. 

Rob killed the last cutthroat, leaving us with just the two Tar Devils.  It was especially stressful because whenever a Tar Devil brought one of us down to zero, that meant the unconscious body was adjacent to them in their damage-inducing zone.  This meant our death saves would auto fail, so we had to try to rescue downed party members as quickly as possible.  The zone also slowed us down, so it was that much harder to get away from them.  We kept our distance as best we could, but not all of us could do ranged damage.  Finally we finished them off - Tamir killing one, and Rob dropping the other.

We got in one more short rest after this battle, and ended the session.  Unfortunately, we still have at least one more battle before we'll have the chance to take a long rest, and it looks like it will be a doozy.  With so many of us out of spells and healing options, it is mathematically improbable that we'll be able to survive the next fight.  But no guts, no glory, right?  Wish us luck.